Abstract
We quantify the performance of aerosol and ocean remote sensing products from the PolCube instrument using a previously developed polarimeter retrieval algorithm based on optimal estimation. PolCube is a modified version of the PolCam lunar instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter that has been optimized for Earth-Science observations of aerosol, ocean, and thin cloud optical properties. The objective of the PolCube instrument is to retrieve detailed fine-mode (pollution and smoke) and coarse-mode (sea-salt and dust) aerosol properties over the ocean for a range of light to heavy aerosol loadings using its polarimetric-imaging capability at multiple angles and wavelengths from 410−865 nm. An additional objective is to discriminate aerosols from thin clouds. PolCube’s retrieval performance of aerosol optical and microphysical properties and ocean products is quantitatively assessed. We estimate that PolCube can retrieve total aerosol optical depth at 555 nm (AOD555) within ±0.068, fine-mode AOD555 within ±0.078, and fine-mode single-scattering albedo within ±0.036, where all uncertainties are expressed as one standard deviation (1σ). PolCube’s accurate and high-resolution aerosol-retrieval products will provide unique spatial and temporal coverage of the Earth that can be used synergistically with other instruments, such as the Geostationary Environmental Monitoring Spectrometer to improve air-quality forecasting.
Highlights
The 2017 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space identifies aerosol absorption as one of the key geophysical variables to address as part of the Aerosols Designated Observable (National Academies of Sciences and Medicine, 2018), which is part of the future NASA Aerosols, Clouds, Convection and Precipitation (ACCP) mission (Braun et al, 2019)
In this paper we introduce a modified version of this polarimeter instrument for Earth-Science applications called PolCube
We have used an accurate, coupled vector radiative-transfer model with optimal estimation to investigate the performance of the future PolCube CubeSat polarimeter which takes its heritage from the Polarimetric Camera (PolCam) lunar polarimeter on KPLO
Summary
Dramatically reduced instrument costs are needed to enable constellations of small satellite polarimeters that collect measurements at multiple times each day to resolve hourly variations in aerosol and cloud properties An example of this dramatic reduction price without sacrifice in capability is the HARP polarimeter that deployed from ISS in 2020 (Martins et al, 2018). We quantify PolCube’s ability to characterize aerosols by analyzing the retrieval capability of detailed aerosol optical and microphysical properties including aerosol absorption, effective radius and refractive index using the Microphysical Aerosol Properties from Polarimetry (MAPP) retrieval algorithm (Stamnes et al, 2018) Another target of observation for PolCube is the detection of thin liquid water and cirrus clouds using polarized reflectance measurements near backscattering viewing geometries (Sun et al, 2014) and the characterization of ice cloud crystal shape and scattering properties (van Diedenhoven et al, 2012).
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